Weak and Snobby

I was running some errands on Sunday, and I had some fun experiences.
First, I ran to Goodwill to drop of some textbook donations. I had the books in a box, and I thought they were pretty heavy. It was a trial getting them to the car from my apartment. I don't think I'm super weak or anything, so I swear it was a heavy box. So I pulled up to Goodwill, and I walked over to the donations area. There were two young guys working there, and I told them that I had a box of books that was a little heavy and asked if one of them could come grab it for me. Generally I'm quite self-sufficient and would have gotten the books by myself, but I was already tired, and I'm in the middle of moving anyway. The guy started walking to my car with me and was basically taunting me about asking for help with the heavy box, as in, "Oh, it's a really heavy box is it? I wonder if I'll be able to lift it myself." I think I just looked at him in amazement and laughed a little. The next thing I knew, he picked up the box, and continued the mockery. "Oh, my back. I'm afraid this box is too heavy and I'm going to hurt my back." Weird Goodwill Guy! What's that all about?
Next I went to get the oil changed in my car. I took it to a quick change place, and I asked if they had Valvoline oil. I'm a Valvoline oil fan. The guy didn't know, and he went to ask his manager. The manager came out to talk to me.

Manager: "Yeah, sorry, we don't have Valvoline. We only have Penzoil and Quaker State."
Me: "Oh, really?"
Manager: "Yeah, sorry, I mean, if you bring your own oil in, we can give you a discount."
Me: "Okay. I know I don't want Penzoil, but how's Quaker State?"
Manager: "So you've been putting Valvoline in your car?"
Me: "Yeah."
Manager: "Yeah, then you really don't want to use Quaker State."

Hmmmm...so their product is really....good???? So I brought my own oil in. Yes, I'm an oil snob.

I Heart Banana Slugs

This is the first banana slug I ever saw.
As it turns out I really like banana slugs.

Who's Your Landlord????

There is something really strange about leasing offices. At mine, it is rare that I have a good experience or even speak to anybody working there that seems moderately competent. My favorite situation was when the manager told me that there was a "flat fee" for trash collection, and that it "varied" according to how many times they pick up trash in a month. Okay then. So my roommate is having a lot of fun right now. I'm moving out, and they have to re-check her credit and all to make sure she qualifies on her own. Yesterday they called her to update her on the status of her application. They said that everything was in order, but they just had to check in with her previous landlord. The funny thing is that they were her previous landlord. She stated that fact to them and they claimed that they were just going to go over a couple things with the manager.

Scary Woman

I am currently working on a research paper for my physiological psychology class. We were given a few topics to choose from, and I ended up going with the following:

"Is surgical or chemical castration an effective treatment for habitual sex offenders? Why or why not?"

I just thought it was interesting, and I don't know much about the topic.
So in preparation for the paper, I went to the library over the weekend. I found a few books that seemed to have relevance to the topic. After checking out the books, I started to walk out of the library lobby; there are several sets of theft detectors before the doors, and, of course, I buzzed as I was walking out. I waited in line for the gate attendant to check over my collection of books and verify that I had, indeed, checked out each book I was leaving with. When I got up to the counter, he looked at my first book, which was something about the male psyche, and sort of chuckled. He then got to my second book, aptly titled "Castration," and he got a little flustered. He looked up at me nervously and stammered, "Okay, then Ma'am, you're okay, you can go on through. Alright." I'm pretty sure he was just joking, but he didn't even check over the rest of my books.

Death By Minivan

FW&BF and I took a surprise trip to Vegas over the weekend. You might think that we had this planned, but actually the idea first popped up at about 4PM on Friday, was solidified by 5:15PM, and we were out of town by 7:30PM. One bit of craziness we encountered on the trip (and believe me there was plenty of craziness, though not all ours,) was a minivan. It was a minivan with a very large family in it, and it still had the dealer advertisement plates on it. We were sitting in traffic on 58, approaching the intersection of 58 and 14. It's only a little two lane highway, and the section of it we were sitting on was particularly dangerous. There were double yellow lines, with a rumble strip, and reflectors in the middle. Traffic was at a standstill, because several miles ahead there was a traffic light slowing things up. For some reason, this minivan still thought it was appropriate to pull into the left lane, driving slowly towards oncoming traffic, and then try to merge back into the frozen line of traffic heading to Bakersfield. It was insane to watch, especially considering the semis that would drive by at 70mph every now and again. I still can't figure out what they were thinking; I have never witnessed a worse driving decision. We passed them later when the highway turned back into two lanes on each side, and they didn't appear to be in a hurry. A small child was hanging out with the two adults in the front with no seatbelt. I guess, if you're going to do it, you might as well do it right.